Siùil a Rùn
by greyrondo
Summary: Let's go, right now. I don’t care where we go; as long as we go together, I won’t be afraid of losing you.


Disclaimer: I don't own FFIX. However, original elements do belong to me.

What is this? A fic of mine that doesn't focus on Kuja? I love the red mage design and I loved Freya's story. She's my favorite lady on the FFIX cast. Please enjoy, and please review!

~greyrondo

**Siùil a Rùn**

The time was, as always, something intangible. The clouded sky did nothing but distinguish day from night; one of the builders from Alexandria raised his eyes and panicked, possibly thinking the entire day had wasted away with nothing accomplished. Then he looked across the street to the clock tower and saw that it was only a little past noon, and kept working.

But for once, it wasn't raining. And Freya wished that it were.

Rain would have disguised her silent tears. So to make up for its absence, she pulled the brim of her hat forward, casting her face in shadow as she gazed down at Burmecia's rebirth from the palace ruins.

"What's wrong?" Sir Fratley asked her not a moment later.

Freya sighed. He had already picked up on that habit of hers; soon, there would be no forgotten detail that he had not relearned in the brief time since she had anxiously returned to Burmecia and uncertainly returned to him.

But even if he relearned her every quirk, retrained his own responses to them—as she avoided replying with a shy smile, he reached over and readjusted the brim of her hat, just as he used to—even if all the even ifs came back to him, he wouldn't be the Sir Fratley that had won over her heart.

"It's silly, but… I was just thinking that Burmecia is dead," Freya said, avoiding his gaze. "No matter what, Burmecia can't go back to the way it was. Even if all the buildings are built the way they used to be, we can't rebuild the people who lived in them before they died. We can't plaster over people's memories of their city crumpled like this. I mean—"

She didn't know what to say then. It wasn't as if Sir Fratley weren't aware that his memories were just like Freya had just described—crumpled, gone, and then replaced with others.

A shadow fell over his face, and he looked out, as if trying to find the exact rooftop that caught her attention. "I think—I think you're right. Especially since Alexandria sent people to help us rebuild—it's an irreplaceably kind gesture, but Burmecia won't be just Burmecia anymore. Some of these builders won't know how to build in the Burmecian style—some will know building techniques that may even be better than ours. And the people themselves—maybe they'll build a life for themselves here while they're building houses or shops and maybe they'll fall in love, maybe with all of Burmecia, maybe just someone in particular in Burmecia."

"I would be happy if something like that happened," he added. "And while I'm not happy that the Cleyra's refuge was destroyed in the sense of the lives that were lost, but in a way, I'm happy that the barrier between us was destroyed. I watched you dance with the Cleyra," he said then. "You were—"

Suddenly, he shook his head.

"What?" Freya wanted to know. "You can't just start a sentence like that and…" her voice trailed off, and she looked at him expectantly. Sometime in the silence, she noticed that her tears had stopped.

"You were beautiful," he said finally. "You looked like you had been dancing as a Cleyran priestess your entire life. You looked like you were meant to dance with them, like you were one of them."

"I—" Freya began.

"Freya," he said, turning to her, "even though I wasn't here to defend Burmecia when it fell, I want to be remembered as someone who helped build a new Burmecia. But one thing: I want my name to be remembered with yours."

"I… I don't think I understand exactly what you're trying to say," Freya said, blushing, as she turned away. She had already leapt to the conclusion she wanted, of course. Three words that she thought she would never hear from him again.

But if those three words were what he truly meant, then she wondered if she wanted to hear them from him, or from the ghost who shared his face.

"Freya, you did what no one else was willing to do. Instead of just defending Burmecia, you journeyed to ensure that the entire world was safe."

But that was exactly what you were trying to do when you became lost to me, and to Burmecia, Freya added silently.

"I'd like for Burmecia to become a reflection of what you did. From what I've heard, we might not have isolated ourselves inside of a sandstorm, but we weren't that different from the Cleyrans. I hope that many of the Alexandrians who came here end up staying. Maybe they'll bring their families or start new ones. I hope that the Cleyrans decide to stay here with us too, and I hope that maybe more of our people go out into the world, until defending Burmecia means the same thing as defending the entire world."

Then again, perhaps it didn't matter if he wasn't the same Sir Fratley that she loved. She wasn't the Freya that he had fallen in love with, either.

"Fratley," Freya began. She didn't want to wait for him to be the one to say it. That had happened the last time, with the dead Sir Fratley and the forgotten Freya. She wasn't the Freya that he had forgotten.

"I'd like to be remembered with you too, and in the same way. Not just for our separate places in Burmecia's past, but together in its future for what we've yet to accomplish. I love you. I'm not yet sure if I love the memories that your face conjures or the person standing in front of me now, but I don't think that's something I can figure out by myself. It's not that I don't want to be alone, but…"

"I don't want you to be alone," he told her. "Freya, I've loved you since the first time I set eyes upon you—or, at least the first time I remember," he said with a small smile. "I asked the king who you were, and he knew immediately why I wanted to know. He told me that I might hurt you if I confessed, so I waited. I waited for you to return."

He took her hand in his; Freya's eyes went wide, but she didn't pull away. "And you did. I don't want you to be alone because of me ever again."

Then suddenly, it seemed that time had meaning again. The ruins of the old Burmecian palace dazzled in gold, and it took them a moment to understand exactly why.

Sir Fratley laughed. "The sun's come out! Freya, look at our city. Doesn't it look—"

"Breathtaking?" she said, finishing his sentence for him.

"Exactly," he smiled, and they took in the sight of Burmecia cast in sunlight.

Freya looked down to the street below, and saw something even more golden than sunlight waving at her.

"You know him, don't you?" Sir Fratley said to her.

"I do, I'm just confused. I could have sworn he was dead," Freya whispered. "Zidane!" she called out. "You're alive!"

"So are you," he called back casually. "Judging by the way Burmecia's shaping up, I'd say you look like you've got more important things to do right now than chat with me. But hey, just off the top of your head, how many times have you both seen the sun come out here in Burmecia?"

Freya looked at Sir Fratley, who shrugged and shook his head. "Never," she replied. "This is a miracle. Who's that with you?"

Zidane looked behind him, to the figure standing there, shaded by a grey cloak spun through with silver threads that caught the light. "A miracle, you say? Oh, this isn't anyone important," he told her with a laugh. "I just didn't want to make the trip up here by myself. See you around!"

"I'm sure he means that," Freya told Sir Fratley as Zidane and his traveling companion wandered off. "He'll probably show up later on tonight, uninvited, at some particularly inopportune moment. This really is a miracle," Freya said, looking up at the sky and letting the sunlight fall onto her face. "It's exactly what Burmecia needed. What are the chances that Zidane was here to see this? Or that we were here to see this, for that matter," she added.

"It's a miracle, but it's nothing compared to the one that we'll craft for ourselves, for Burmecia," Sir Fratley said. "I can't wait to see Burmecia shine like this without the help of sunlight. It will be like magic."

"Like magic?" Freya said thoughtfully. "I wonder…"

And then she sighed in mock frustration. "Zidane, I can't believe you," she laughed, and shook her head. "Of course he would be here to see this; that's why he wanted to know if the people of Burmecia had ever seen the sun in our lifetimes."

"But you told me that Zidane can't cast magic very well," Sir Fratley said in confusion.

Freya shook her head. "Don't fret over it. Just know there's someone else besides us who wants to be remembered for what's yet to come, instead of what has been done in the past. Fratley, let's go, right now."

"Right now? Where?"

"To your new Burmecia, the one that's a part of the rest of the world. I don't care where we go; as long as we go together, I won't be afraid of losing you."

THE END


End file.
